1. Field of the Invention
This invention related generally to point-of-sale systems for use in pharmacies and, more specifically, to systems for automatically generating advisory and/or other information for distribution to pharmacy patients.
2. Discussion of Background
In recent years, various systems have been used to distribute advisory and other information to pharmacy patients based principally on the identification of a prescription drug being purchased. Prescription drugs in the United States are uniquely identifiable by a National Drug Code (NDC). The NDC for a prescription drug is typically entered into a computer terminal by a pharmacist at the time of sale, and it may be encoded on the product itself in bar-code form. Other prescription drug identification systems are employed in other countries, but the principle is the same: to provide a unique code for each prescription drug dispensed by the pharmacy. Based on the nature of the drug, a computer at the point of sale may be used (1) to generate advisory messages to the patient, some of which may be required by governmental regulation and/or (2) to generate promotional materials concerning related or complementary products sold in the pharmacy.
Although such systems available prior to the present invention are satisfactory for some purposes, the advisory messages they provide are not always appropriately focused on the probable needs of the patients purchasing the drugs.
In addition, the systems available prior to the present invention do not provide a means for transmitting information to a patient from a concerned third party, such as a Health Maintenance Organization (HMO), a Preferred Provider Organization (PPO), etc.
Moreover, the systems existing and proposed prior to the present invention typically require major software or hardware changes to existing pharmacy computer systems, the principal function of which is to print prescription labels, simple advisory messages, and billing information. Ideally, additional functions should be provided without the need for major modification of existing pharmacy computer systems.
In addition, most systems available prior to the present invention do not appropriately target the advisory information, except to the extent that information may be provided based on the identification of the prescribed drug.